Sunday School Craft - Days of Creation....In the Beginning

I searched Pinterest and Google and wasn't thrilled with the "Days of Creation" Sunday School crafts there, so I found one I could modify, and modified it. 

This is my finished craft:

What I didn't like about most of the ones I found is that they used big words like "atmosphere" and "heavenly bodies." The classes I am responsible for are 2-year-olds and 3's & 4's. That means that the days needed to be overly-simplified. Also, since it was a craft, I kept wondering how I could make it tactile and 3D....Then I realized: DOLLAR TREE!

I went to Dollar Tree and bought a bunch of stickers. I found jewel stickers to represent "light" and then found foam stickers of the following kinds: flowers (plants), circles (planets), glitter stars, birds, land animals, and people (sports athletes). I also found some Finding Nemo stickers to use for fish. Then, I stuck them all on the corresponding days. I used a glue stick and a spread-apart cotton ball for the clouds on "Day Two." Pretty straightforward!

Little kids love stickers! Plus, there is barely any mess to clean up!

Here is my template:

The End!

How to Fix: When Stripes Don't Match Up on a Garment

I bought this crazy dress at Rosewholesale.com...which you can find here if you like it as much as I did. 

However, this site is from China and it takes a while to get your merchandise...Also, because they are mass-made, you get little problems like this one. (Notice that the right-hand side dart stripes don't match up.)

Also, if you look along the bottom of the stripes, you will see that the bottom black stripe is kinda wonky as well. No matter. We can fix both problems!

First, take out the seam along the bottom of the stripes. . .

Then, take out the dart in question.

Okay, in order for the stripes to match up, fold the fabric and then pin the stripes. . .

Making sure that they match up from both sides. Then sew up the dart.

Next, I needed to fix the bottom stripe, so I pulled it down enough to make it symmetrical.

There! Both problems solved!

The sleeves were also really large (as in big around), so I tailored those in a bit...which I have ton a billion other times on these posts, so I didn't bore you with how to do that part.

The End!

Refashioning: Old Lady Pants into Skinny Pants

Updating a pair of pants is pretty easy, but there are some important things you need to look for first.

I really liked the color of these Kathy Ireland (remember that brand from the 90s?) blue velvet pants that were on the Goodwill dollar rack. Velvet is having a moment right now. The legs were way too roomy, but notice how the legs are straight--not flared. That's the first thing to look for.

I put a pair of my favorite skinny pants over them. You can see all the extra fabric along the insides of the legs. If you are wanting to do this project, you can't do it with flare pants. I mean, you can, but you will have to take fabric off both sides of each leg (because flare pants flare out both sides), and that is really hard unless you have another specific situation....Which I shall explain in the next picture.

Okay, see how the inner seam here is just a regular seam with no top-stitching? Let me show you an example of top-stitching in the next picture...

Here is an example of a pair of pants with top-stitching. It's a "flat feld" seam to be exact. Anyways, in order to fix flare pants with flat feld seams (which most of them have, at least in the inner seam), you would have to take all the seam work out--which is at least three rows of stitching per seam. Why all the trouble? Because the top half of flare pants are generally pretty form fitting and you would ostensibly be fixing only from the knee down on both sides. It would look super awkward to sew a normal seam into a flat feld one. You'd get a weird bend in the seams on either sides of your knees. Anyways, that's way too much work, and when I saw the afore-mentioned blue velvet ones, I knew that they wouldn't take much work to fix!

Okay, another thing to be mindful of: the back of the leg is a bigger pattern piece than the front. You can see where my fingers are pointing. On either side of the leg, see how you can see extra fabric creeping up from behind? That is because most people have more dimension on the back sides of their bodies than the front. (If you didn't, you'd look weird.) Anyways, I have seen these "Make Skinny Pants from Your Old Pants" blog posts before, and they don't take into account the percentages of back panel to front panel, and they end up making the front panels too slim and the backs too large. This is because as a pattern is graded (made bigger or smaller), the grader deals with percentages, not just making the shape bigger. Anyways, if I flattened the inner seam and cut the inner seam portion away as a 2 dimensional object, the back panel would be end up being much larger than the percentages you see here, and it would look super "Amateur Hour" when I finished.

So here is how I compensated. I pulled the crotch up!

Then, I laid the red pants on top as a guide for pinning.

I sewed along the pins.

When I tried them on, I realized that the leg on the right side of the screen was tighter than the left. You can especially see between the two pins that it's tighter. What I should have done was to pin one leg, sew it and test it, and then cut both legs to the same measurement before sewing the other leg. That would have saved time. No matter. It's a learning experience!

So what I did was to cut the seam down on the good leg.

Then, I matched up both legs, one on top of each other.

And then cut the bottom leg to match the top one.

You can see here how "off" my sewing was! By almost 1/2 an inch!

I sewed up the second leg. . .

And took out the tighter of the two seams.

I had a ton of fuzzies now, so I took some packing tape and rubbed them all off.

Matching legs.

Below you can see the pants before and after. 

The End!!!

Sunday School Craft - Christmas Sheep Mask

It's no secret. Little kids love two things: Christmas...and Animal Masks!

So, combine them in this cute sheep mask. I took the template from Pinterest, but added Luke 2:8 on it's ear (the verse about the shepherd watching their flocks). Now that I'm putting this into my blog...I realized that it still has the little mask string dots on either side of its cheek. Oops. Sorry. Anyways, it is available for you to use at the end of this post.

You will need: cardstock, tongue depressors, Exact-o knife, glue, cotton balls, and crayons (optional).

Cut out each mask

Now, take an Exact-o knife and cut a cross over each eye. (Probably do this before the little kids come in.)

Then, cut out the eyes.

Glue on the tongue depressor.

Take two cotton balls and pull them out a little bit.

Put glue on the top of the lamb's head.

Stick on your two cotton balls. (I first put a bunch of balls on the top and when I picked it up, the top started sagging, so that's why I only put two balls on. The cardstock can only handle two.)

You can color it as well, but...I didn't because...I'm lazy! Ha!

The End!

Refashioning: Altering a Trench Coat

If you know me, you know that I shop at the Goodwill dollar rack on Thursday mornings. The other week, I found the best thing ever:

I'd been wanting a red trench coat forever! As soon as I washed it, two of the buttons came off (above), so I sewed them on (below). I love the style of it: bold red with white trim. Totally me. However, it was two sizes too big. I could have belted it, I guess, but I hate when trench coats don't fit perfectly.

I laid my Red Valentino trench coat (which cost a good deal more than a dollar!) over it as a guide.

The first thing I did was to cut the belt loops off and set them aside. They were interfering with the side seam.

I turned both coats inside out and started planning out my pinning.

Once pinned (which took a while), I sewed up the seams.

A close up of a seam.

I cut off the excess.

Because the rest of the seams were covered, I decided to cover this new seam. I used black binding lace.

I also cuffed the sleeves. 

Then, I put the jacket on and figured out where the tops of the belt loops would need to go back on. You can see the pins.

I sewed the loops back on.

I put the original picture next to the picture of the alteration, so you could see the difference.

The End!